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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

That'd be a terrifying precedent to set. "I don't see artistic value in your art, so I can mass produce copies of it."

The converse, however, would be to declare porn to be useful art, and thus deserving of the constitutional protections granted thereto. I have my popcorn at the ready.

It's already Constitutionally protected as speech. That's why it's not illegal anywhere in America, even though other "vices" like alcohol are.

But speech doesn't necessarily have to be protected by copyright.

Declaring pornography to be unprotected by copyright on account of "it is not useful" is an extremely scary proposition to me. The apathetic responses in this discussion are also pretty scary. Try to understand the potential implications here.

People enjoy it - if that is not enough to declare that it is "useful", then what is? How can you define any other forms of entertainment to be "useful"? How far-fetched would it be to eventually declare video games to be not "useful"? Or movies?

Seeing how copyright is being used to undermine people's constitutional rights, I think copyright should be abolished for absolutely all works, not just for porn.

The concept of copyright is broken. We need something new and that doesn't go against the human nature or against people's constitutional rights. We need something that doesn't restrict sharing or freedom of speech.

     How far-fetched would it be to eventually declare video 
     games to be not "useful"? Or movies?

Not as far-fetched as SOPA.

Are you saying that copyright should be abolished in conjunction with replacing it with a new system? Or that abolishing it altogether would be acceptable? I'm not sure I can imagine that transition.

Copyright (and the patent system) are fundamentally broken in the US, but I don't agree that perpetual copyright terms and SOPA follow naturally from any legal copyright system. I'm a believer in limited copyright actually encouraging innovation, and that includes with restrictions on sharing and freedom of speech (eg I publish a book, I don't believe it should be a form of protected speech to then make a copy of that book and distribute it. On the other hand, I also don't believe that should be a felony or that you owe damages of more money than you might make in your lifetime).

Freedom of speech is already restricted in many ways, and not just in ways that a cynic would point out. None of us lives alone on this planet, which implies that we will have to make concessions in systems already without an optimal solution for all parties.

It's "Useful Arts" and it has a quite distinct meaning from the modern conflation of useful & art.

I implore those commenting to consult a reference source.

The article doesn't talk about a personal judgement of artistic merit, but rather a previous court ruling (“Early Circuit law in California held that obscene works did not promote the progress of science and the useful arts, and thus cannot be protected by copyright.”). Now perhaps that court ruling isn't that much different, but your comment implies a personal judgement of value enabling copyright infringement.

Doesn't any definition of "obscene" inherently contain a personal judgement?

Coming from a single person certainly. Coming from a court though, it would imply the court's judgement which would seem a little bit different.

That's what record companies do, isn't it? Well, OK, they do a bit of marketing to fluff it up a bit, but, you know...

That's a self-defeating statement. By copying it, you've acknowledged its value.

Thats a disingenuous reply. "Artistic value" is not the same as "any value". I don't see any "artistic value" in a pile of coal, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have utilitarian value.

Someone saw "artistic value" in a bunch of soup cans[0], so I'm not sure that the phrase, "artistic value" has an actual meaning.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_Soup_Cans

That's an interesting case to raise in a copyright context. How would have Warhol been treated in today's trademark and copyright law environment? It seems there wasn't a problem in 1964.

[1] http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/07/i-hear-you-like-tomato-...

We ran an Campbells/Warhol exhibit at my school and all the information that was provided to us was that they had worked well together as he had no "negative impact" for Campbells. I would assume the same would be true today.

Warhol’s view is encapsulated in the quote ". . . a group of painters have come to the common conclusion that the most banal and even vulgar trappings of modern civilization can, when transposed to canvas, become Art." - A quote from your link

I agree that "artistic value" may be a hard defense in court, but the paintings are not about soup. They are about us. The things that we create and our ideas on culture and society.

See Duchamp: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp]

"The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act." - Marcel Duchamp

Not really: just because I want a copy of something for whatever reason does not mean it has any artistic or scientific value. And porn would be "useful" even with artistic or scientific merit ;)

"That's a self-defeating statement. By copying it, you've acknowledged its value."

I've just copied your comment, but I nevertheless think that it is of low value (as evidence against your hypothesis, I present the case of myself copying your low value comment...).

Proof by recursion!

One could argue that the very fact that you saw fit to copy my statement to present an "impressive" rebuttal proves that my statement was valuable artistically.

I don't believe that the materials used in art need have artistic value of their own.

This raised a (silly) question in my head: Does a public comment on the Internet, like the one he made, fall under his copyright thus allowing him to deny you the right to copy it?

Technically yes, I believe so. I suspect it would be rather hard to win that case however.

Technically yes, but your response is fair use because the purpose and character of your response was literally "fair and reasonable criticism" and did not "supersede the use of the original work".

Exact same reason parody is cool.

Why technically? Simply yes, unless the website terms and conditions provides otherwise.

However his quoting of it would probably fall under fair use, even though he copied all of it.

I only said technically because the case for fair use would be so strong that in practice I doubt I could actually be sued successfully.

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